The word “value” is something which is unfortunately not often associated with recruitment. “Need”, yes, “Cost” definitely, but not “Value”. My team and I want to address this, and I guess if you’re wanting to grow or sustain your recruitment business, then you do too!

Being that the UK Recruitment industry is worth over £30Billion (a pretty valuable number!) – value to the economy is demonstrable!

I’m delighted to be part of the Alex Moyle’s Recruitment Gym A-Z of Recruitment campaign. He’s a passionate recruitment advocate and he asked me which letter I’d like to record a 60-second video for – I grabbed “V” for Value! You can see the video at the bottom of this blog… but think about:

My clients, Recruitment leaders, are fixated on the value of their businesses, and so they should be.

Their marketeers are often fixated on the value that they add to the sales process.

Recruitment consultants and resources are fixated on the value of their desks, and what kind of fees are they bringing in.

But maybe we should be focusing on the value of the more tangible items in our business, our most important assets, our staff.

But damn, what a cliche! “The most important asset is your people” – fluffy HR rubbish? Or is there a nasty trend brewing? One which will have a massive negative impact on the recruitment industry – is it that…?

2/3 of Job Leavers in 2017 Left Due to Not Enough Training

What training do you actually give your teams? Be it sales/systems/marketing etc…?

Are you aware of how this training (or the lack of) impacts on your teams? What value does it deliver?

The training that you buy for your teams – how do you make your staff accountable for learning and delivering?

Every recruitment leader I work with either wants more from their teams or needs to recruit more staff. What is your plan this year for using training to fix staff retention and staff output? Every meeting I have with recruitment leaders has this as a topic.

Recruitment Training Does Not Work When…

Have you fallen into the trap of buying training at the beginning of a change process, not making someone accountable for monitoring the effectiveness of the recruitment training your bought, and then saying “well, that didn’t work” 6 months later when things haven’t really changed and:

systems are not being used

recruiters are not placing

fees are getting lower

data is still dirty

job board budgets are still crazy

staff are not energized

hours of time on LinkedIn is not offering the phone calls you want to hear and see

and recruiters still not really engaged with your “way” and not delivering your processes?

Nine in 10 Employees Want Their Company to Offer More Learning Opportunities

But what training does a recruiter actually need? And how should it impact upon their desk/day/pipeline and your business? And is what they are being trained to do, offering value to your next most important asset, your data?

Are you Staff Really Your Most Important Asset?

It’s a touchy subject to talk about – the fact that data and trained people may be equal… But let’s admit that they at least rely on each other, and when you add process and systems, boom! You have a sustainable pipeline! When you mess about with that trio – people/process/data – everyone suffers.

Do their job adverts and time on LinkedIn generate great inbound sales, clean data on your Bullhorn and Adapt systems?

Is the training that you spend your profit on driving your 3Cs – candidate, client, and colleagues – onto your recruitment CRMs? Or do you have a data dump, not a database?

Ask yourself: Is my recruitment CRM “first” in the pecking order for everything that you want to do, be it sourcing and placing, not just invoicing?

Recruiters are “Blowing” £100,000 Per Year by Not Training

Recruitment Leaders – have a think about all of these questions. We estimate that the average 50 person recruiter is wasting at least £100,000 per year NOT training their staff – by losing them, rehiring, paying them, retraining them, and waiting for the “time to bill”. and that’s not accounting for lost fees due to the disruption… Only you know that figure.

Watch this short 1-minute video I created for Alex. Some food for thought about the value of recruitment

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Lisa Jones is a Director at Barclay Jones, a Consultancy working with recruiters advising them on the most effective use of technology, web and social media to improve their business processes, recruitment and bottom line. Follow Lisa on Twitter @LisaMariJones.